How integrate manually installed app into the desktop?

Question

By manually installed, I mean downloaded as a .bz2 file and extracted into my home directory. What should I do so that it's available from the dash and so I won't have to go to the directory and click the bin file? Please no .desktop file creation, I'd only want it to be available from the dash and via open with menu.

Answer 1

Alacarte

After installation of Alacarte open "Main Menu" from the Dash or open a terminal and type

alacarte

This will open the menu editor. Choose the app category on the left that your app fits into and then click New Item.

Enter the name of the application. In the new window click Browse next to the Command item and find the file resp. the command that launches the app. You can click on the default icon and browse to find a different picture to use. Then Click OK and then try searching Dash.

Answer 2

Right way of doing this is to... create .desktop file.

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications/

then create yourapp.desktop file with following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=APP NAME
Comment=SOME COMMENT
Icon=/path/to/some/icon.png
Exec=/path/to/executable.bin
Categories=SOME_CATEGORY